The other morning, quite by accident, I discovered my favorite moment of the entire day. 

It was Sunday, I think, and I was standing in the kitchen pouring my first cup of coffee.  My husband was leaning against the island, chatting with me. The kids still in bed, the house was quiet, clean. I’d lit candles, a fire burned in the woodstove, and outside rain clouds threatened. Already, I’d gone on a run, lifted weights, and showered. Dressed, with my eyes in, make-up on, and hair scrunched, I felt both gloriously wide awake and luxuriously relaxed.

As I screwed on the lid of my thermal mug, I sighed happily. “This is the best part of the whole day.”

As soon as I said it, I realized just how true it was. All the hard stuff was done and now I got to enjoy my coffee. Visit with my husband. Catch up on computer stuff. Eat.

There are lots of other happy moments throughout the day — all of us lingering at the table after supper, talking sput; shooing the kids off to bed and cuddling on the sofa with my husband to watch a show; burrowing deep into a writing project (or rather, finishing a writing project); drinking tea on the porch with a friend — but there’s nothing quite like the deep satisfaction of a dreaded task completed mixed with the anticipation of that first cup of coffee and it’s-a-new-day buzz.

It really is the best. 

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (11.18.19), the quotidian (11.16.15), in my kitchen: noon, the quotidian (11.18.13), lemony lentil goodness, three things.

Hello, hello!

In case you haven’t already noticed, this blog is in the middle of undergoing a massive overhaul. After months of listening to me fuss about the new blogger format, and then coming to my rescue over every little thing, my brother finally convinced me to let him switch the whole thing from blogger over to wordpress. 

For a little bit there, it was touch and go.

One night, with the transfer in process and my blog in tatters (or at least inaccessible — is there a difference?) and the rest of the world falling down around my ears (a state of affairs which are, I’m afraid, becoming increasingly normal but some days I just can’t even), I had to pop an Advil PM just so I’d be able to sleep. 

And then my brother worked his magic and everything turned out hunkydory!

Or mostly so. There are glitches, still. Scrolling through, you’ll see line-spacing, font, and centering issues (just to name a few), all lingering evidence of the HTML contortions I had to put myself through to make my posts look uniform.

Now all that junk is visible.

It pains my soul, it does.

But not enough to make myself go back through and painstakingly pick through each knot! My time is too valuable (or so I like to believe) and this blog too inconsequential. The content is still legible and that, I’ve decided, is good enough. Thank you, in advance, for being gracious and overlooking my computery ineptitude. (That said, if you do come upon a particular post that is twisted unbearably — especially the popular posts and the ones with recipes — tell me.) 

But now, for the good news: I love wordpress! I’m only just getting started, and I’ve got miles to go before I’m even a little bit competent, but — Holy cow, it is so easy!!! There are so many options! It makes sense! I have control! 

The other night, jittery with excitement from all the wonderfulness, I left my desk to stand in front of the sofa where my husband was deep in an episode of Game of Thrones. “It’s amazing,” I hissed. “Like, really, really amazing. It’s like—” I cast about, trying to find the words — “It’s like all those years with blogger I was chiseling my bog posts out of stone.” 

Sure, there will be glitches and headaches and unfixable problems — this is me working with a computer, remember — and I have a dozen years of blog posts that are in varying degrees of imperfectness, but so what. I’m imperfect, too, and heck if I’m going to let that stop me from trying to coax beauty and meaning from the daily grind of my flawed and oh-so ordinary life. 

To change! [clinks glass] To imperfections! [glass shatters] To life!

xo

This same time, years previous: sourdough English muffins, guayaba bars, success!, Thai chicken curry, the quotidian (11.16.15), I will never be good at sales, lessons from a shopping trip, official, the quotidian (11.16.11), chicken salad.

Over the summer a friend (no idea which one — sorry, friend!) suggested that I write a blog series profiling homeschooling families. With so many children being educated from home, she said, it might be helpful to hear from experienced homeschoolers. 

At first I was hesitant. In the beginning when Covid hit and schools shut down, it bugged me to hear everyone refer to themselves as “homeschoolers.” For me, homeschooling was an intentional lifestyle choice rooted in freedom, not to be confused with being confined at home all day washing our hands nonstop. This parenting-in-a-pandemic thing was not normal for us, either. 

The whole situation got my panties in such a twist that I even wrote an op-ed about it. Being forced to stay at home full time with one’s kids because of a pandemic is not homeschooling, I ranted: It’s parenting in the midst of a global crisis. And supervising school-mandated assignments is not homeschooling; it’s helping with homework.

Nobody snatched the piece up though (sniff), which was probably just as well because then, a few weeks later, I was like, “Hang on. If anyone’s homeschooling, it’s these pandemic homeschoolers because they are, quite literally, doing school at home.” If anyone was misnamed, I realized, it was us, the pre-pandemic homeschoolers, aka the dinosaurs. (What should we be called? I’ve been pondering this for ages, and have no idea. Help me out, people.)

And even while I was getting all worked up about our fringe lifestyle getting co-opted, at least in name, by the mainstream — Who would’ve thunk it! — I knew I wasn’t being entirely fair. The divide between schooling and homeschooling has never been clearcut. Schooled kids study at home with their parents’ help. They learn via all sorts of nonschool activities like clubs, community volunteering, jobs, and voracious reading, same as homeschooled kids. And homeschooled kids, in turn, often enroll in actual school courses.

There’s no one right way to homeschool. 

So here’s the thing: As Covid has drug on, more and more parents, worried about contagion and frustrated with the switch to virtual learning (and its accompanying many hours of screen time), have bailed on school — some just for the year, others maybe for longer. Some parents are even beginning to question the value of school, an institution they’ve always taken for granted. They’re starting to ask hard questions about what they want their children’s learning to look like, and to make changes accordingly.

But should I host a blog series as my friend suggested? The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. Homeschoolers are a wildly diverse bunch, and showcasing a few of them might help make the transition to homeschooling easier for all these newcomers. If nothing else, interviewing a bunch of interesting people would be a heck of a lot of fun for me.

And that, my friends, is how my new blog series — that I am oh-so creatively calling “The Homeschool Series” — was born. 

If you’ve signed off of school-sanctioned learning temporarily (or indefinitely, or forever, whatever) OR if you’re considering doing so OR if you’re just curious about what life without school looks like, this series is for you. I’ve got a bunch of people queued up for the next few weeks and months, ready to tell the nitty-gritty of homeschooling.

Stay tuned! 

This same time, years previous: study stills, the quotidian (11.12.18), enough, for now, George Washington Carver sweet potato soup with peanut butter and ginger, butternut squash galette with caramelized onions and goat cheese, refrigerator bran muffins, sparkle blondies.